Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall shares his vision with Airmen during a town hall at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, August 17, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alan Ricker)
WASHINGTON — Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently served up a blunt rebuke of Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military promotion nominations, saying American servicemembers have been taken “hostage” amid a policy dispute.
“That is using — holding hostage, if you will, our military people for a political policy objective that’s not being attained by other means,” Kendall said during the Potomac Officers Club 2023 Air Force Summit on Tuesday, though he did not mention Tuberville by name. “That’s not the right thing to do.”
Kendall cited the hold as one example of concerns he had about how “politics is going to get in the way” of Pentagon efforts as an election year approaches.
Tuberville’s hold was prompted by a Pentagon policy that permits servicemembers leave and travel reimbursement for seeking an abortion, many of whom reside in states that have strictly limited or outright banned the procedure after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Though technically individual promotions can still go through using a more time-consuming floor vote, the move effectively meant that more than 200 officers — including President Joe Biden’s nominee for the next commandant of the Marine Corps — have seen their promotions hampered as a result, with hundreds more at risk if the senator’s blockade persists. (While would-be Commandant Gen. Eric Smith himself described the real “ripple effect” of not being officially promoted, Tuberville said earlier this month his hold will have a “minimal effect” on Smith’s ability to lead.)
“We are not going to change our position on that,” Kendall said of the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, adding that the effects of Tuberville’s hold are “hurting the country.”
Kendall also decried another lawmaker holdup, this one on “reprogramming” of funds, that are related to the Air Force’s forthcoming decision on where to base US Space Command. Those reprogrammings, Kendall said, “should be routine,” but now are another example of “using military men and women as hostages.”
The reprogramming delays, Kendall said, have disrupted everyday events like servicemembers’ changes of station. Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation accused House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, also an Alabama Republican, of freezing the reprogramming requests to force Kendall’s hand on the basing decision.
Rogers recently agreed to approve reprogramming requests that affect troop compensation, though he will continue to stall others as a protest over the still-pending SPACECOM basing announcement, according to a report in Defense News.
NDAA, Appropriations and AETP Funding
Lawmakers have been generally receptive to the Pentagon’s warnings about China’s growing military prowess and the need for the US to modernize its military capabilities, Kendall said, though he did point to some concerns as Congress debates the fiscal 2024 policy and spending bills.
“I always worry about the bills getting passed, but I think the political situation right now creates more risk,” he observed. Following House Republicans’ move to include controversial amendments in the FY24 policy bill on social issues like abortion and access to gender-affirming care for transgender servicemembers, Kendall predicted that the provisions “are clearly going to be unacceptable in the Senate,” adding that he would “be very surprised” if the Democrat-controlled Senate and Biden “accepted those provisions.”
Kendall still said he sees “a way forward” on the National Defense Authorization Act as the upper and lower chambers of Congress go to conference to iron out their differences, holding out hope “that there’s the same on appropriations.”
As the budget process drags on — with Kendall warning that the spending caps set by the debt ceiling deal may not enable the Air Force to “move forward as fast as I would like” in FY25 — he predicted “a reasonable expectation is a CR [continuing resolution] and then appropriations passed sometime before the first of the year, which is what we’ve become somewhat used to unfortunately.”
The Air Force secretary also pointed to a couple worrying markups, highlighting an approximately $551 million cut to the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter by House authorizers and House appropriators’ move to slash funds for multiyear munitions procurement. Kendall said, “We’re gonna have to talk to the Hill about some of those.”
Kendall also defended the “painful” call to shutter the Air Force’s Adaptive Engine Transition Program — where Pratt & Whitney and GE Aerospace have designed prototype alternative engines for the F-35 — as the “correct decision given the constraints we had.”
That’s why, he added, some lawmakers’ moves to seek continued funding for the program could be needlessly burning cash.
“The problem is unless you’re willing to commit to the entirety of the development [of the engine], you’re probably throwing that money away,” he said. “You could potentially get to a meaningful cutoff point, but we’re already at the meaningful cutoff point, basically. So we’re not supporting that add.”